G.O.P. Contenders Ponder What to Say About Bush

The Republican presidential candidates are expected to sidestep offering views on President Bush while offering tributes to Ronald Reagan.Credit
Monica Almeida/The New York Times

LOS ANGELES, May 2 — As they gather Thursday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library for their first debate, the Republican presidential candidates are thrilled at the chance to associate themselves with Reagan. But they may not be able to escape the challenge created for them by the current president.

As much as Iraq or health care or any other issue, the question of how to deal with President Bush is vexing the Republican field. Do they embrace him as a means of appealing to the conservative voters who tend to decide Republican primaries? Or do they break from him in an effort to show that they will lead the nation in a new direction? Do they applaud his policies or question his competence — or both?

Already, the leading candidates are showing clear divisions on that score. In formally announcing his candidacy last week, Senator John McCain of Arizona, without naming Mr. Bush, attacked the performance of the White House at home and abroad. In doing so, he separated himself from his two main rivals, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney, who have chosen to stick close to Mr. Bush, or at least to avoid breaking openly with him.

Aides to the candidates, who spent Wednesday in Southern California preparing for the debate, said they expected Mr. Bush and his record to be present in spirit when they began taking questions. Mr. McCain’s advisers said their candidate, who spent the day at his condominium in Coronado, expected — and welcomed — an opportunity to expand on his differences with the White House.

“It’s always difficult — and we recognize this — to elect someone to a third term from the same party,” said John Weaver, a senior McCain adviser, in a break from debate preparations. “We know that to be the case. John is going to express his views as he see them: in some cases he and the president have shared the same position, but in some cases they don’t.”

Mr. Weaver argued that making a distinction with Mr. Bush was essential for any Republican who wanted to break the historical pattern and keep the White House in the same party for a third term. “Ultimately, if we’re the nominee — knock on wood — there will be a clear choice with Democrats, and I don’t think having a Republican administration will be a hindrance to us winning,” he said.

But it is a risky strategy, as even Mr. McCain’s advisers acknowledged, and it is one that has been explicitly rejected by aides to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney over the last few days as they have assessed Mr. McCain’s decision. Advisers to both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani said that it was foolhardy to attack a president who remains so popular among Republican primary voters, and that Mr. McCain, whose position with this group was already shaky, was making a mistake by moving in effect to a general-election strategy before he had won a primary.

Aides to both said the candidates had no intention of using the debate to turn against Mr. Bush.

“You probably won’t hear that,” said Alex Castellanos, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney. “Mitt Romney is going to be talking about where we are going; he doesn’t have to relitigate the past.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who was re-elected in a largely Democratic state in no small part by breaking from many Republicans, said it was a mistake for candidates to explicitly distance themselves from the president.

“I would not do it,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said in an interview in his office in Santa Monica. “I think it’s much better to say, Here’s what I believe, here’s what I would do.”

It is hardly a coincidence that none of the Republican presidential candidates have appeared in any high-profile public settings with Mr. Bush in recent months.

Photo

Student volunteers from Pepperdine University gathered at the Reagan library to prepare for the debate.Credit
Monica Almeida/The New York Times

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted April 20-24 found that 76 percent of Republicans said they approved of Mr. Bush’s job performance. That was down notably from March 2001, when 94 percent said they approved of his performance.

But the fact that so many rank-and-file Republicans still side with the president suggests the kind of headwind Mr. McCain is flying into when he expresses disapproval of the way the White House responded to Hurricane Katrina, for example, or when he calls for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, or when he questions how the war was executed in Iraq.

But — and here is the problem for all 10 Republican candidates expected to take part in the debate at 8 p.m. Eastern time here — just 32 percent of overall respondents in the New York Times/CBS News poll said they approved of Mr. Bush’s job performance, a reminder to Republicans of the tough task they face in winning the White House again, particularly if Democrats succeed in making the election a referendum on Mr. Bush.

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That is something certain to be on the mind of all the major Republican candidates on Thursday night — aware that they are not speaking, say, to a Republican audience in Dubuque, Iowa, but a national audience watching on MSNBC, which is sponsoring the debate with Politico.com.

The participants are expected to include Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; Jim Gilmore, a former governor of Virginia; Mr. Giuliani; Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas; Representative Duncan Hunter of California; Mr. McCain; Mr. Romney; Representative Ron Paul of Texas; Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado; and Tommy Thompson, a former governor of Wisconsin.

The very site of this debate, in California, is a reminder of what is at stake. Garry South, a longtime Democratic consultant based in California, said that he thought Mr. McCain, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney might actually have a chance to be competitive in California, given their moderate stances on some issues, but that their potential could certainly be shattered if they were perceived as cheerleaders for Mr. Bush.

Mr. McCain’s advisers said there was some political cover in parting with Mr. Bush on some issues because the candidate had been such a strong supporter of the president on the war and because Mr. McCain’s concerns were shared by a vast majority of Americans. That said, Mr. McCain, after a series of back-and-forth shifts over the last two years, is trying to thread the needle: criticize Mr. Bush before a general-election audience while not appearing to criticize him, at least not directly, before conservative primary voters who are ready suspicious of him.

Mr. McCain’s position may be more complicated because his campaign, more than those of his rivals, is heavily populated with advisers who used to work for Mr. Bush and still have ties to the president and his senior political adviser, Karl Rove.

Presumably, the candidates will try to sidestep Mr. Bush by offering a series of tributes to Reagan, identifying themselves as the former president’s ideological soul mates.

But it will not be easy.

By almost any measure, the field that these candidates are playing on has been created by Mr. Bush, who has dominated his party and politics for years. It is his policies — the war in Iraq, the surge in federal spending that has been attacked by, among others, Mr. McCain, his proposals on immigration — as well as his failings in such areas as Hurricane Katrina that are going to set the framework for the debate on Thursday night and the discussion ahead.

Charles Black, an adviser to Mr. McCain, said he expected the candidates to try to align themselves with Mr. Bush for the time being.

“The general election is another matter,” Mr. Black said. “When we get to February and we have a nominee, whoever it is will be facing a damaged brand and an unpopular president — hopefully not that unpopular — that might change.”

But, he added, “Any Republican candidate who lets themselves get dragged into debating the Bush administration will be making a mistake, whether Bush is popular or not.”

Correction: May 4, 2007

A front-page article yesterday about divisions among Republican presidential candidates on how to deal with the record of President Bush incorrectly identified one of the two candidates whose advisers said it was foolhardy to attack Mr. Bush. In addition to the campaign of Mitt Romney, advisers to Rudolph W. Giuliani  not Senator John McCain  made that assertion. The article also misstated the name of the California town where Mr. McCain spent the day Wednesday, preparing for a Thursday night debate. It is Coronado, not Coronado Beach.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Set to Debate, G.O.P. Contenders Ponder What to Say About Bush. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe